Greenfield Village

Years ago when I was in highschool, we visited my Aunt and Uncle in Michigan and went to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. I have wanted to go back ever since. This year was the year I was able to take MY kids back! First we went to Greenfield Village. Henry Ford has collected all kinds of homes and antiques so that we do not forget our history and where are roots came from! The homes and such are in the Village while the automobiles and other artifacts are in the Museum. If you ever need a wonderful, interesting place to visit where learning is fun for the kids, this is the place to go......

 At the front of the Village. My Uncle Bill, Frankie, Gracie and Aunt Peggy......

I love looking at all the gardening they do and getting ideas for back at home.......

More gardening ideas.......

This picture was the first one ever taken of a plane in flght. The Wright Bros. had the guy out there to take the picture. The plane was only in the air for a matter of seconds! Afterwards, they asked the photographer if he got the picture....his reply "I'm not sure! I got so excited!" They had to wait to get the film back weeks later to see if he got the shot! As you can see, he did!

 I think I will employ this process on my peas next year.....

A reenactment of the Wright Bros coming home to their sister after a successful trip testing their airplane. These actors were very good! We really enjoyed them. There was a boy sitting in front of me that kept taking pictures and video taping, "Orville Wright" referred to him as those "newspaper men"! O.K. it was funny the way HE did it! lol

Frankie trying to follow a chicken through a hole in the bushes! Luckily he stopped short of getting stuck!

I asked Gracie if she had any idea why they would have a basket of corn cobs in the outhouse....she thought they had to keep busy at all times and would shuck corn while sitting there.......ummmmm no! haha!

The chickens Frankie was chasing. I still say....ONE DAY I WILL have my own chickens!!!

The first house to be wired for electricity. It was across the street from Edison's office, and it was used as a boarding house for his workers.

Glad they started putting it inside the walls. It doesn't look so nice outside of them!

The kids did get along for the majority of the trip, I must say the threats made against them if they didn't, worked!

                                                     Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bill, kept going.......

                                                      When the kids pooped out!!!

                                          Those red hat ladies are everywhere!

               Love this picture of Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bill, just wish the tree was centered more!

The end of the Village day! Everyone was still smiling so that was good!

Good morning suprise!

So I let my dog out the front door the other morning and he goes tearing off to the right chasing a bird! Meanwhile, I am sitting on the front steps and hear a tiny little "meow" over and over. I look between the bushes and the house and see this little kitten coming my way. No mama in sight. Hunter, in the meanwhile is STILL chasing birds! Now, for a side note, my husband has been HOUNDING me to get a kitten, but as he already has 2 big birtha cats, that do nothing but cause problems, I kept saying no.

However I could not in good conscience leave this poor defenseless and dare I say it, cute, kitten out there to fend for itself. So I took it and showed the kids, called the husband, emailed him pictures and yes, we now have a new member of the family. I told the kids they had to wait on their dad to come home to name it, but they started calling it mystery, and since it had a M stripe on it's forhead, figured that would probably stick.

It was such a snuggler! I thought it should be called Maggie, and my husband agreed.....until he got home and discovered Maggie was a boy, so it became "Gibbs" from the show NCIS! I thought McGee would have been better, but the husband and kids seem to like Gibbs, so even though I rescued it, I think I lost the battle on the name!

NOW Hunter figures out to check him out!!! So have the Old gals Chris already had, and let me tell you, Gibbs has had them having to be a little more active and aware and a little less.....shall we say rocking chair cats!

fingers and sandy soil.....

When we moved in our home 6 yrs ago, we knew it had a septic tank and well water. We knew we would have to have the tank cleaned out every so many years. What we did NOT know (but we have a feeling the previous owners did) was that the fingers (the pipes that slowly drain the septic water out into the yard) were the original ones from when the house was built back in the 50's. We had constantly had water coming up in the yard right by the tank. We assumed it was due to the tank being full. So we called the first people we found in the phone book to come pump it out. It did not go away. In fact it got worse. We had them come pump it out again.....they cracked our lid and said it was our fault.....grrr. So we lived with this ever growing muck in our yard.

Finally I had had enough. I found a different company right near us that would come out and see what was going on and not charge us to diagnose the problem. We found the greatest company. It's family owned and take their reputation very seriously and are very honest people. They could not find the "fingers" so they had to come back with the back hoe and dig to find them......Now here's a little info you may not know, I sure didn't. Years ago (like when our system was put in) they wanted you to put the fingers way down underground so they wouldn't flood your yard. Ours were like 4 ft underground. In the last 20 yrs or so, they figured out it's better to go only 2 ft so the ground dries quicker. Long story short, all ours were disenegrating AND needed brought up to the 2 ft level. So the deal was struck and the job scheduled, and rescheduled and rescheduled, as mother nature kept deciding to drop rain down on us when they were supposed to come out. Finally the day arrived, and so did my aunt for her scheduled visit and my nephew, needing to be babysat AND my brother and his friend to help swap out refridgerators for me......because around here no day ever goes as planned! lol It was definetly an interesting process....

Last year I had planted my garden out in front of the shed in the middle of the yard. It was too big and I decided to move it and make it smaller. Thank you Jesus for looking out for me, or as you can see, the "finger's" would have reached right through my garden and THAT is not the extra pair of hands I needed in the garden!

I don't know what I was expecting, but I was startingto be concerned that they were going to go over all the way into the pool! lol But we were all facinated by how fast they worked! The started in the morning and finished up just after lunch!

Here you can see the "rows" for each finger. As they finished one, and dug the next, he just dumped the dirt on the previous row so all you saw was the front of the opening. The crew was very impressed with my sandy soil. They said it is a dream for a septic owner and if all their jobs were that easy they would LOVE doing them. I've always wanted to be admired for my sandy soil.....all girls secretly do!

Wow! They certainly did expose quite a bit of my beautiful sandy soil! It got turned every which way. My aunt and mom were wondering if they were going to flatten all that soil out before they left.....

Wonder no more "Louie" and his trusty back hoe (which may I add, he was sooo good with. You would think it was his actual hand they way he had control over those things!!! He could probably pick roses without crushing them as gentle as he could move that thing!) to the rescue!! *** Note, the large pile of "weeds" to the left of his picture was our old melon patch that also had a pile of sod from the old garden on it. Because it was a pile of dirt, we could not mow it and it was becoming a weed garden. Good ol' Louie, took that hand of his and flattened it out for me! What a guy!!!

And in no time flat, so was the ground! The final product! Took about 15 minutes off my mowing time! HAHA! Now we have to wait until Sept to plant grass seed so it all has time to settle. And the final word from Louie (and I am guessing God speaking through him) no more gardens or digging over the area. It could mess with the drainage. I had been contemplating trying again, too, after watching a video. I guess God decided He'd had enough of THAT garden! hee hee!

I hear voices.....

we had such a busy weekend, but a good one. while working in the kitchen, i had the radio on and the song "i hear voices" came on. the singer talks about hearing the voices of people who had given him advice etc... anyway, it got me to thinking of the things i remember people saying that still stick with me......i remember my grandma saying "look for something before you ask where it is".....that was a big one that now is a pet peeve of mine when people don't look first....wonder if she had it said to her when she was young as well and it became a pet peeve of hers! lol  i also hear my mom saying "don't fight other people's battles for them, you'll just get yourself in more trouble then them".....how true that one was! unfortunetly had to live that one for it to sink in.  i hear my dad telling me "be careful what you say, once it's out there you can appoligize but the damage is done"  i do TRY to remember that one when i am mad, but sometimes my anger gets ahold of my mouth before my memory does. when i look at the stars at night, i hear my cousin telling me "i think the stars are made from flashlights", no, that is not any kind of advice but a fun memory of us laying in my granny's trailer and coming up with silly little ideas of what things were made from. i can hear my granny's laugh, my aunt's laugh, my brother calling my name.....none of it advice by just voices i hear when i think of them....anyway, just something i was thinking about......wonder what voices other people hear and what they are saying.....

Red Eye Correction

Who in the world gets pink eye when they are 35 yrs old? It's like getting chicken pox as an adult! Well, evidently I do! And isn't pink eye protocol, that you wake up one morning and your eye/s are matted shut? Who has it come on all of a sudden while tearing a seam out of a sleeve? Honestly, if I could have blown my eye as much as I did my nose, I think it could have gotten cleared up. But instead I was resorted to wiping it with a wet wash cloth. However, the good news..... when I went to minute clinic (thank goodness for the invention of minute clinic) she said, don't let anyone eat or drink after you. I said, but I'm the mom, I cook all the meals. She informed me, well have your husband order take out and bring it home to you! I said, can I get a prescription for THAT?!

Old Records

So, a few YEARS ago, my mom gave me this software. It's to use to convert old records, cassettes, 8 tracks (yes I DO know how old THOSE are!) all over to a cd or mp3 file. Great idea RIGHT?! YES! IF it was user friendly. Me, being technology lacking, am not so friendly when using this! Btw, I finally found said software again, after finally cleaning and organizing my room!

At first I was so excited! I read the directions, they seemed pretty simple. I COULD DO THIS! I got out all the old records I wanted to start with! (don't look at the ugly carpet they are sitting on, it's horrific, but they want us to pay money to replace it)  I couldn't wait to be listening to them on my ipod! I had visions of getting them on my Dad's ipod and getting him to actually USE the ipod we gave him....a few year's ago.

Well, after THINKING I was doing it right, and playing 19 songs, then realizing, I had "converted" dead air, I THOUGHT I had the problem figured out. So I REPLAYED those same 19 songs.....to no avail. And now, my once clean and organized desk, now looks like this.......and I am sick of 19 oldies songs after trying a third time to do this.

I decided to create this post so I could feel I accomplished something today in regards to technology. Although I don't know why the pictures seem so small, but for sanity sake, I will say to protect you from the glaring reality of the how bad the mess actualy was.

So I am calling it a day, well night, and will try again tomorrow. I'm a little closer, I have gotten them to where you can play them off the cd, and you can play ONE of the songs (the first one) in my ITunes directory, but I need to be able to play all of them in my ITunes as well as label them......but that will have to be accomplished on another day!

Mushroom Hunting

I vaguley remember the time my parents took ME mushroom hunting, while I do enjoy mother nature, I am not one to stay in the actual woods long. Call it a fear of bugs, mice and snakes, I'm not sure. However, my son Frankie LOVES all things naturey (no not a dictionary word, but more of a TOTH word). So I had called my Dad and asked if he was going mushroom hunting this year. He wasn't sure, as in the past few years he had not found very many and was very discouraged. Well I was bummed because I knew Frank would LOVE to get to go into "the jungle" (what he used to call the woods when he was little) and spend the day just wandering around.

I had told my friend Barb about this. She goes mushroom hunting every year. She has been on a hot streak! She went out the other day and found over 600 mushrooms! Now I do not enjoy mushrooms, store bought or wild. While some in my house do, they do not care for the Morells so I did not know much about hunting for them. What I learned is, over 600 is a HUGE amount, that usually is a total for like a whole season! She said she wished she had Frankie with her cuz she thought he would really enjoy it! She decided to go again the next day and offered to take him! I was soooo excited for him! At first, he said  he did not want to go if I did not go, but we discussed it and he finally  got so excited to go, he decided he would be fine. He informed me the next day he had a dream that Barb was trying to kill him in the woods and he had to find a deer to jump on and get away, but that he knew that would NEVER really happen! lol The next day, they originally were going to go back to the same place and I was going to take Frankie there, but then Barb called and said they decided to go some place else, and had me drop him off at her mom's house.

O.K., I'm going to be completely honest, no matter the ridicule, because they were no longer going to be right near our house, I will now (after the fact) admit, to being a little nervous. I totally trust Barb with him, but it was supposed to rain, and I kept picturing him getting hit by lighteing! O.K. ,laugh all you want, but this is how my warped brain works. HOWEVER Frankie was a little nervous too, (he had the stomach squrmies) so I played it cool. He asked me "now how long have you known Barb?" I told him atleast 5-6 yrs, he said, "it took you 12 years before you trusted Dad to take me somewhere!" lol, ok, well he was younger then.....and besides, I am working on cutting those strings, AND I DID let him go and told him I was fine with it EVEN though I had "squirmies" in my stomach also as I drove away. Ofcourse I also was driving on a side of town I was not familiar with, so it could have been that as well! lol

O.K., back to the mushroom hunting. I thought about calling about 15 mins into it, but decided I would not be that kind of parent. I also thought about sending a camera and saying please take a picture of his first mushroom hunting trip, but again, didn't want to be that parent either. Luckily Barb knows me well enough, that she took pictures with her camera without me even haing to ask! She also let him call me (again, this is why I love Barb, she knows and accepts my quirks and works with them, OTHERS could take note! lol ) about 15 mins into the hunting! lol They had found a bunch already and he was having a WONDERFUL time. Well that news finally let the squirmies go away and I was able to calm down. He also called me a couple more times, much to my heart's joy! lol

They ended up finding over 700 mushrooms! She let Frankie keep the ones he found (3 3/4 pounds, and since we don't like them, he was able to sell them (@ $20 a pound) (Grandad sold 2 bags for him at work)  which he was able to add to the $ they are saving up to go to South Carolina. So overall he had a Great Day, and wonderful memories were made. Barb was able to tell me lots of funny Frankie stories, that I will not embarass him with by puting on here but you can bet I WILL be putting them in his memory box! lol